


Ways He Never Fell

by Carradee



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Non-Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 22:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12309150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carradee/pseuds/Carradee
Summary: One-shots for shatterpoints that could've been handled differently to keep Anakin from ending up Vader.Chapters:1. Mace gives a Jedi answer.2. Mace plans tactically.3. Mace brings Anakin along.(And these won't all focus on Mace—this is just where I'm starting.)





	1. Mace gives a Jedi answer.

When Master Windu demands that Anakin wait in the High Council chamber while the councilors seek to arrest the chancellor, he’s trying to treat Anakin as he would any other Jedi—giving him space to meditate and center himself, protecting him from the blatant conflict of interest of having to arrest his friend. (Windu has had to do the latter, before, and he would rather take that responsibility on himself than inflict it on anyone else.)

Anakin doesn’t realize that. He just thinks Master Windu doesn’t trust him—which, to be fair, Windu never really has—and doesn’t see the kindness in the order. It doesn’t help that Windu’s forgotten, if he ever knew, that Anakin finds peace and quiet anxiety-inducing, not soothing. It would’ve been better to order him to help the mechanics.

Even so, Anakin tries to obey the order, but the silence and solitude make his conflict of conscience yell all the louder. He tries to suppress it.

He can’t, though. Maybe because he never learned how, or maybe twenty-some thousand medichlorians just can’t shut up.

He returns to the offices of the supreme chancellor, sees Master Windu seeking to kill the Sith.

When Anakin protests that they need to arrest the man, Windu **doesn’t** call Palpatine too dangerous to live.

Instead, he says, “And how do you suggest getting Force suppressants on him?!”

Anakin blinks, realizes that they _can’t_ arrest him, and takes Palpatine’s head off as the chancellor starts on about his wife.

He stares at the corpse. _What have I done?_ He has killed Padmé.

“Wife?” Master Windu asks, disapproving as he always is.

Anakin swallows and turns to see to the other masters who had come, to see if anyone else survived.

“Skywalker,” Master Windu says. “How did he know about your wife?”

Anakin freezes. Turns slowly. “ _You_ know?”

“She’s been your shatterpoint for a long time,” Windu answers. “You’re not the only Jedi who’s just been waiting for the end of the war to petition for permission or to resign altogether.”

Anakin blinks. “You…”

“Not me,” he says firmly, “but I know a few.” He goes to Master Fisto’s body and sighs.

“Oh,” Anakin says. “I _was_ gonna resign, I think.”

Who else was planning to leave the Order? Was it anyone he knew? And what was that ‘petition for permission’ thing he was talking about? Attachment was against the Code; the Council would never—

“Skywalker.”

He startles and looks to Master Windu, who has set the bodies aside—they’re all dead—and is looking at the former chancellor’s terminal. They’ll need evidence of what has happened, that Palpatine attacked first with Sith arts.

Anakin assumes the Sith attacked first, but how can he really know?

Master Windu gives him a stern look, and he is _sure_ a lecture is coming on his distrust of the Council—as if he doesn’t have reason, after what they did to Ahsoka.

But the man asks, “Why does your wife need saving?”

And Anakin realizes, in a blaze of shock and shame, that maybe he misunderstood Master Windu all along. 


	2. Mace plans tactically.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one kept growing on me. Every time I thought I was done… XD
> 
> I'm hoping it works and I won't need to edit it. What do y'all think?

When Anakin reports that Palpatine’s the Sith, Mace starts to order him to wait in the Council chambers, then pauses. “No, go help the creche get to the safety tunnels, in case this ends badly. If this proves right, you’ll have my trust—and apology.”

Anakin swallows hard, longing for the great man’s respect even while part of him thinks _It’s about time._ But he obeys the order.

While the high councilors die—and Mace manages, by the skin of his teeth, to force an opening to ensure a mutually fatal blow, since he can’t best the Sith master—Anakin is _busy_. Busy helping the children, the toddlers, the infants. Busy remembering his own infants, soon to be born.

As the younglings are guided through safety routes that nobody had ever dared hope they’d need, to safety bunkers Anakin hadn’t even known the Order had, he feels increasingly on edge. The work keeps him from realizing it until they reach the end, the wait, and then it hits him all at once.

“I need to go,” he tells the creche master, and they trust General Skywalker enough to think that of course he has something important to do.

Anakin goes straight to Padmé. He is there when the chancellor’s body is found, and he is in Padmé’s senatorial box when the accusations are made. Artoo prevents Mas Amedda from doctoring the security footage, overrides the Senate system to make the whole thing show, disproving Amedda’s claims of unprovoked violence, of an assassination attempt.

The blatant lie gets him stripped of powers and charged with everything his enemies can think of that’s even remotely pertinent. Padmé mutters that he’ll probably get off lightly, due to his connections, but at least he’s out of position, and loading all charges on him will at least slow his return to power and give them opportunity to outmaneuver him.

Anakin barely hears her, his mind spinning on the footage. Masters Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, and Saesee Tiin had all fallen far more quickly than they should have. If someone had been there who was used to how Sith muddied the Force, who could’ve countered it and protected them while they recovered from their surprise, maybe they wouldn’t have died, and Mace would’ve had help and been able to overcome Sideous, rather than just set up a no-win situation.

 _I should have been there,_ Anakin thinks, guiltily. _They wouldn’t have all died if I’d just gone with them._

Master Windu hadn’t trusted him enough for that, but he’d said outright that coming to him with the news about Palpatine would earn it, if it were true. _Why?_ Why that, when nothing else Anakin had ever done had shown him to be trustworthy?

The stress drives Anakin to break down in Padmé’s apartments, while Organa and Mothma are visiting. He’s been trying to give them space, to let her do her job, but he _needs_ her and rants and begs for an answer _why_.

Padmé’s relief confuses him, as does Organa’s sympathy. Mothma seems unsure what to think, the loudest emotion being confusion tainted by fear.

“You finally trusted him, Anakin,” Padmé says gently. “Distrust leads to lies, and he couldn’t afford to trust you while you weren’t returning the favor.”

He’s tired enough to listen to her words and actually hear them. That…actually makes sense. “So you’re saying Obi-Wan doesn’t trust me.”

“Can he afford to?” Padmé asks, quietly. She glances at Mothma for a breath, then to Organa, and seems to have the answer to a question. “You trust each other with your lives, yes, but your feelings?”

“Obi-Wan doesn’t _have_ feelings!”

“That’s absurd.” Organa is outright appalled, and dismay weeps in the Force as he stands and offers a hand to help Mothma up. “But that answers why he’s afraid to admit them. Thank you for that.”

Padmé winces. “Bail…”

“It’s all right. We can leave—”

“Please,” Padmé interrupts. “ _Don’t_.”

There’s a quiver in her voice. It drops Anakin in the memory of Rush Clovis and how she’d wanted a break in their relationship, and the significance slams into him like a podracer crash.

_She doesn’t want to be alone with me right now._

Indignation flares—how _dare_ she think he’d hurt her?!—but…he _has_ hurt people he cared about before. How did he forget that?

And from what they are saying, he’s been hurting Obi-Wan, too.

Anakin clears his throat. “I’m sure you have a lot of political stuff to do, since the Senate’s top people are…” dead or under arrest. “You want breakfast? I can go get something from Dex’s.”

Padmé hugs him, and her tears moisten his tunic. Her relief is a live thing, frolicking about them in the Force. “I love you.”

Mothma drops her teacup.

Organa just smiles a little, wariness tugging at his eyes. He’s concerned for Padmé’s safety, too, and it makes Anakin feel awful that he can’t be sure Organa lacks reason.

He’d been considering joining Sideous, to save Padmé.

He’d been _considering joining Sideous_?

What is _wrong_ with him?!

Anakin goes to Dex’s to get their food and, without thinking about it, adds Obi-Wan’s favorite burger. He then triples the order, something telling him that they’ll be needing the leftovers in the busy-ness of the next few days, and he knows Padmé’s account can handle the expense.

He returns to find Obi-Wan hunched on the couch, as the senators fill him in on what happened.

Anakin realizes he never told the Order, and the Senate broadcast was the first any of them knew what was going on. Did they get the broadcast, as deep as they retreated in the tunnels?

“I need to go,” he blurts, handing everyone their food. “I’ll be back. I just forgot a Jedi thing I have to do.”

Obi-Wan forces himself to his feet.

Anakin shakes his head. “No, no—I have it. I’ll be right back, really. I just need to make sure the Temple found out what happened.”

“They don’t know?”

“I don’t know. I helped everyone get to the safety bunkers, and I’ve been here since.”

“All the other high councilors on-planet are—are dead,” Obi-Wan whispers. “I need to go with you.”

“Nonsense,” Organa says. “You’re exhausted, Obi-Wan. You’ll sleep better away from all the stressed Force-sensitives. I can spare you a room.”

“Or you can stay here,” Anakin says. “Padmé has a guest room already made up, in case— Um.” In case Coruscant comes under seige and leaves her stuck here to give birth.

“You’re the father,” Obi-Wan says, and Anakin can hear nothing beyond weariness in it.

“Um.” _Where’s the disapproval?_ Anakin wonders. _Where’s the betrayal?_ And he remembers Organa saying Obi-Wan is _afraid_ to admit what he feels, and that it’s Anakin’s fault. Is it? “I’ll be back.”

He goes and updates the creche masters, and he returns in time to make sure Obi-Wan finishes his first burger while the senators attend the mess of their jobs. Obi-Wan rests, then returns to the Temple, and he sets the 212th to helping the Order. The 501st takes over guarding the Senate, as the one thing that body can agree to do (after that blatant evidence of their leader having been a _Sith_ ) is remove all of Palpatine’s direct employees from their positions, to theoretically prevent doctoring of evidence while Judicial investigates.

Padmé is nominated for chancellor. She refuses the nomination—citing that her health is such that she may soon require a holiday to recuperate, and she cannot in good conscience accept the position while that’s the case—and throws her support behind Bail.

A week passes, with the Jedi carefully resuming use of the Temple proper, and both the Order and the Senate navigating the aftermath of what’s happened.

The chancellor’s troopers don’t act right, more like automatons than people, even in the Force. It makes Anakin sick to see. “Good soldiers follow orders” is all they say when questioned, and it reminds Anakin of Tup and Fives and…

He tells his wife about the clones’ anti-aggression chips, and she frowns and arranges to have Palpatine’s troops tested. One’s found where the chip looks to be doing damage, and and the clone’s gratitude after the doctor removes it makes Anakin choke. The clone takes some convincing to be willing to testify, but Anakin’s a Jedi and a general, and even clones without Names have been programmed to heed that. (Or maybe Palpatine had included Anakin’s authority in his plans for the galaxy. The thought makes him uncomfortable.)

Regardless, on the testimony of that one de-chipped clone, describing what the chip actually _did_ to him, the surviving generals and many admirals scramble to have their troops cleared of the hazard. The Senate even orders it, after Anakin describes how it caused Tup to turn on his superior officers (and, coached by Padmé, he carefully doesn’t admit that Kamino never confirmed the chip as the cause, nor that the kill order may be specific to Jedi). In fear of the millions of clones being able to be forced to turn on them, the Senate orders for all members of the GAR to be de-chipped.

Tarkin and some others who were particularly close to Palpatine snub the command. The Senate is panicked enough to arrest them and demand an investigation into how the programming got into the bio-chips in the first place, since obviously, if the Jedi were responsible, they wouldn’t have taken command of the GAR and put themselves in line to be killed by the programming.

Anakin is still confused by all that’s happened, by just how much Palpatine lied to him and how much he’s never really understood of everyone around him. That misunderstanding is why Sideous had believed Anakin would join him, and that realization terrifies Anakin enough that he bites his tongue (sometimes literally) and forces himself to actually _listen_ and ask questions about what people mean.

He hears Padmé thanking her goddess for it, when she doesn’t know he can hear her, and the happiness she feels at him just _trying_ to communicate is damning.

Anakin swallows his pride and admits to Obi-Wan that he’s not sure he ever should’ve been knighted, that he’s not sure what to _do_. His old mentor’s respect for him doesn’t falter and in fact grows, and they meditate _together_ for the first time in years, letting the secrets free of the dark. Obi-Wan lets Anakin see his love for Siri and Satine, and Anakin grits his teeth and reminds himself that he promised Padmé he’d tell Obi-Wan as his mentor stumbles into the memories of his mother.

“Oh, _Anakin_ ,” Obi-Wan says. There’s horror in it, and so much sadness. “I’m sorry I didn’t… I’m so sorry about your mother.”

Anakin frowns at him.

Obi-Wan doesn’t want to explain, but he ultimately sighs. “I could’ve asked for someone to be sent to check on her. I should’ve at least done that much.”

But most Jedi’s dreams didn’t come true, so what good would it have done?

With Dooku and Greivous dead, the fighting tapers off, and Obi-Wan organizes the freed-up troops and their commanders to conduct sweeps, clearing out pockets and hopefully closing in on those responsible.

Judicial finds a record of Mustafar in Palpatine’s records. Obi-Wan and Anakin investigate together, and they arrest all the Separatist heads found there. Cease-fire negotiation starts, though Supreme Chancellor Organa won’t start full peace negotiations until a few bills finish getting through the Senate. If they pass, it’ll mitigate reparations the Republic can demand of the Separatists. He’s more interested in creating lasting peace than resentment. The war has been expensive on all sides.

Nobody wants to be responsible for all the many millions of grown clones, or for the ones still growing. Bail makes a long-term plan to maneuver laws in place before specifically helping them, too, and he quietly arranges for the Order to maintain authority over the clones, with caveats that allow troopers to request transfers to other departments, as they wish. Their scope of responsibilities expands to allow them to be included in refugee aid and further work common to Jedi and their various Service Corps.

Jedi _can_ work on their own, but if their jobs would be safer or faster with help and the help is available, why not provide it to them? The Order had graciously allowed the Senate use of the clones and equipment they’d purchased, as well as their own time and effort and numbers, with so many dead. Did anyone want the Order to bill the Senate for all that? No? Well, then…

Many senators start backing Organa for the sole reason that his arguments could leave those who disagree with him looking like idiots. (They eventually pay attention to the senators whose disagreement with Organa indicate a safe topic to have their own opinion on, borrowing smart arguments from who they can, but that’s not happening yet.)

Pictures of the very pregnant Padmé Amidala, accompanied by her husband in her Senate seat, make the gossip channels, and Obi-Wan runs interference.

(“General Kenobi, did you know about General Skywalker’s relationship with Senator Amidala?” “Of course. I’m not blind—oh, I’m sorry, are you saying you didn’t notice?”)

(That response works really well with fellow Jedi who bitch about the relationship, too.)

The Jedi frustrated by Skywalker’s blatant attachment heckle various surviving members of the High Council until some of them hit the new fill-in Aayla Secura, whose sweet smile stays in place while she tells them to frip themselves out the window. It doesn’t take many examples of Jedi getting charged with indecent exposure, accompanied by security footage of them doing as she’d suggested, before they realize she is as every bit as terrifying as the rest of her lineage.

(One tries filing in-Order charges on Master Secura for misuse of Force suggestion, but testing demonstrates that whatever she did _wasn’t_ actually that. Which leads to much fearful muttering, in those circles, about what she could’ve possibly done instead.)

Master Yoda, though, realizes the lesson that young Secura is pointing out, that their behavior is itself demonstrating strong attachment—to rules, but it’s attachment nonetheless. He apologizes for being insensitive towards her loss. She accepts the apology and dumps records of married Jedi in his lap. He is _not_ pleased at having his beliefs confronted. He _is_ pleased that she isn’t idolizing him. It’s as if Kit was the reason she held her tongue, or perhaps his death has kicked her into speaking out instead of keeping silence.

Yoda uses his age and authority to executively declare that Jedi who maintained their duties and a relationship through the war can come forward without fear of reprisal, so their mission shedules and assignments can account for their families, and that he wants to talk to such Jedi to discuss how they can incorporate that as an option in the Order, since history shows that both attached and unattached Jedi have their strengths.

Aayla breaks into sobs in the middle of the High Council chamber.

Aayla is not the only Jedi to mourn that the approval couldn’t have come sooner, and she starts meetings for the widows and widowers, actual or would-have-been. She discovers Valin Halcyon and quietly adds ‘orphans’ to the list of those invited. Depa Billaba comes, on account of the death of her father figure and Master, Mace Windu, and that precedent causes the meetings to balloon into most of the surviving Order, as orphaned padawans join in, then masters who lost padawans.

Obi-Wan does not attend. He has too much to deal with to break down over the deaths of the women he loved. ”Maybe later,” he promises. Always “Maybe later.”

With the war settling down, the healers take the time to check on the mental state of Jedi, making such checks required.

Chief Healer Vokara Che does Anakin’s herself, and she tells him that he has the threads of Dark Force suggestion wound through his mind. It looks to be unraveling on its own, with the Sith Master’s death, but so much of it is old.

Anakin thinks about that, thinks about his confusion and how much of the Jedi he’s never understood, apparently, and he asks, “Old like from the Battle of Theed?”

“Maybe,” the healer says. “There’s no way to be certain.”

Anakin is certain.

He spends the night repairing someone’s abandoned astromech droid, working through his anger and into meditation, instead of going home to his wife. He calls her the next day to tell her, and he spends the next week working hard to burn all the foreign Dark he can out of his mind.

He attends Aayla’s next meeting, in memory of his mother, and Padmé comes with him. It’s the first time several of the Jedi have seen a pregnant human, and she spends most of the meeting discussing her condition. A few bolder Jedi ask her about intercourse and its hows—and it’s not just younger padawans—which leads to mutual gaping between the Jedi from non-celibate lineages and those from celibate lineages, both of whom had believed their way was how a Jedi was supposed to avoid attachments.

Aayla documents that disconnect and dumps it in Yoda’s lap as yet another factor they’ll have to work into the entire “different ways of being Jedi work for different people” thing. Yoda grumbles at her. She grins for the first time since Kit died.

While she’s in the Temple, Padmé visits the Halls of Healing, and she personally thanks Healer Che for her work keeping Anakin alive. The conversation from there leads to an accidental revelation of _Twins?!_ , which confounds the healer and makes her demand Padmé get a medical examination immediately, for her own safety. The healer does what she can, but she has to dig through her staff before she finds someone who has firsthand experience with Human pregnancy.

Padmé and Anakin finally arrange a press conference and tell everyone that they’re _married_. (The fact that the press conference is how Obi-Wan finds out, too, is entirely an accident. They’d forgotten he didn’t know already.)

Ahsoka hears about the gossip and returns to Coruscant. It’s from her that the 501st and the 212th (and, to be honest, many in the Order) find out about baby showers, and they all pool together to throw the Naberrie-Skywalkers the biggest baby shower in the history of the Republic (or so the Holonet reports it, later, usually with pictures of Master Yoda wearing cream pie, courtesy of some lucky person in the massive food fight that was the highlight of the party; Padmé fights a giggle every time she sees it).

The twins are still born early, as twins often are, and they are still born to a galaxy in turmoil. But it is the turmoil of the Republic cleaning house and growing, not of it dying, and their father and uncle and big sister and cousins-the-clones are all there to welcome them.

Anti-slavery laws strengthen and grow, and the clones embrace a role as enforcers of the laws and aides to the rescues. (Many clones end up with spouses out of it, particularly from the pleasure houses. They’re provided enough psychology education to understand that such a choice might have more to do with safety than love, but they’re willing to work with that.)

The clone battalions still heeding her or her family gives her military ability to enforce compliance with anti-slavery laws and to help adapt rescued slaves to free life. Bail privately encourages it, and watching both the clones and the freed slaves be educated in being free helps Anakin discover areas where he never escaped his childhood.

He cries himself to sleep in one of his wife’s guest rooms, sometimes, as he remembers people he can no longer help, like his mother, or apologize to, like Master Windu.

One day, Eirtaé hands him some sort of pup or kitten that seems unsure if it should eat him or comfort him, though Bolek quickly decides that that it loves all the people who take care of it and catches an assassin while it’s still teething—which is how they all find out its tail is venemous. Eirtaé refuses to apologize. (“It’s just a sedative.”) Or admit where she got it. (“Isn’t it cute?”)

The first time Quinlan Vos sees Bolek, he laughs his head off. “It’s a vornskr,” he admits. “Mean critters.” He refuses to say any more than that and wears Bolek out with push-feather. Anakin takes that knowledge and Quinlan’s identification to track down more information in the Temple Archives, which just makes him and Padmé kinda pissed at Eirtaé.

(“Vornskyrs _eat_ Force-users.” “No, they eat Force _voids_.”)

By the time the twins are nine, their mother has finally gotten Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru (along with other neighbors who’d been willing to relocate, to escape the Hutts, once they realized it wasn’t charity) to move to Naboo, because House Naberrie has more farmland and shaak herds than they have retainers to tend it. Those who stay on Tatooine benefit from family and friends providing them access to better finances and education than is conventionally available in the desert.

When Amidala is elected Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, she has a solid footing and communication chain on Tatooine, so when she confronts the Hutts about their dealings there, _she has evidence_.

Between that evidence and the Jedi and the troops at her disposal, she manages to free several planets of their overlords, where the people want help, and many of Bail’s long-term plans finally bear fruition under her rule. Padmé points that out, gives speeches illustrating the path to where they are, showing how it’s not her work that’s accomplished all this.

Some political theorist pulls the records of how she improved Naboo and writes a book allegedly proving that she’s just letting a man take the credit for all her hard work. The book is worse about cherry-picking evidence than her own version of events, and it demonstrates some significant (and false) assumptions about how a senator gets in a Jedi’s good graces. She hires a ghostwriter and publishes a counter to the theorist’s interpretation of events, and she encourages Anakin and others she knows to do the same.

Anakin doesn’t want to talk about his time as a deluded lackey, but the others don’t write it, either. Obi-Wan’s still not taking care of himself very well. Kix is expressing concern about that again when Anakin gets the idea to turn it into kind of a writing group where they’re each coming up with their own books about their lives. That’s therapeutic, right?

Kix invites Cody, and Ahsoka invites Rex. Anakin invites Dex (who laughs) and Quinlan (who stares at him in confused disbelief, then chuckles uncomfortably). He finally asks Aayla, who shakes her head and says she’d have to kill anyone who read it (and her tone makes the hair stand on the back of his neck). Anakin hadn’t realized, until then, how few of Obi-Wan’s friends survived the war, and he feels terrible for that oversight.

He finally drags Obi-Wan to the writing group himself, and they take turns guilt-tripping him into writing his book. When they’re all about halfway through, Quinlan slinks in, and when they’re at the critique stage, Yoda dumps a manuscript on them.

Ultimately, the political theorist’s nonsense fades from public memory, but it takes the works of three clones, three Jedi, two senators (Bail follows Padmé’s lead), two former Jedi (because Quinlan has left the Order like Ahsoka, though Anakin never does find out why), and two civilians (Eirtaé’s book is very good at dodging the question of how she ended up bar-hopping with Asajj Ventress, or who she was quoting in the commentary on similarities between Jedi and Sith treatment of non-sensitive allies; Hondo Ohnaka’s makes everyone groan and wonder how the kriff he found out about the project).

The galaxy has its troubles and future wars, but by the time they do, Anakin understands that everyone needs help sometimes, that there’s nothing shameful about it. And when he needs it, he _asks_.


	3. Mace brings Anakin along.

 

Master of the Order Mace Windu doesn’t bother to spare Skywalker’s feelings by keeping him away from the arrest. No, he _wants_ Skywalker to experience the fallout of trusting someone blindly. “Come with us. We will confront the chancellor and arrest him if possible.”

“And if it isn’t possible?” Skywalker asks, illustrating how much he’s never really understood of the hard choices all Jedi have to make, sometimes.

“He must be stopped,” Mace says.

“Which might mean killing him,” adds Master Kit Fisto—redundantly, in Mace’s opinion.

But that is when comprehension flickers in Skywalker. “You mean… Sometimes killing _is_ the Jedi way?”

“Jedi protect. Sometimes for one person to be safe, another has to die.”

“This is ridiculous!” Mace cuts in, unable to believe Skywalker is seriously _that_ ignorant of reality. “You’re telling me Obi-Wan never taught you this?”

Skywalker draws himself up, indignation flaring hot, and starts defending his erstwhile master.

Master Agen Kolar cuts him off. “Your focus determines your reality.”

Master Saesee Tiin sighs. “Mace is handing you a polite method to admit something you were unaware of without accusing you of not paying attention. We are all well aware of Obi-Wan’s talents.”

That was not precisely what Mace had meant, but the point snaps Skywalker out of his tirade, and he blinks at them in confusion.

When they go to confront the chancellor, he comes along.

When the chancellor first lashes out, Dark floods over them like molassas. Skywalker snaps through it first, blocking Sideous’s blade before it lands.

If Skywalker hadn’t come, would any of them have survived?

And what was that order the chancellor tried to activate before Saesee Force-punched him and got a saber in his gut?

(Mace grimaces in sympathy, remembering Depa, screaming as she attacked him and stabbed his own kidney. The failed suicide attempt that followed had ended in a coma, which she’d woken from some months ago, with minimal memory of what had happened on Harun Kal. The Council of First Knowledge had tried her for crimes against civilization, dismissed the charge on grounds of Force Compulsion, and tossed her back at the High Council, cleared for duty. Saesee Tiin had expressed doubt that Depa could fall prey to Force Suggestion, and Kit Fisto had given him the oddest look and started to say something before Ki-Adi-Mundi cut him off.)

Saesee’s death yanks Mace’s attention back to the fight, and he it takes another round of distraction and Kit losing a few lekku before he realizes it’s an insideous, covert, and telepathic form of Dun Möch that he wouldn’t have believed if someone had warned him about it—and that was despite his experiences dealing with the comparable Force abilities of his mute cousin who might have caused Depa’s Fall.

Dear Force, how long has the chancellor been influencing them like this?

Mace gets taken out of the fight by a gouge so deep that the leg might not be salvageable. The pain clears his head like nothing else, just as Palpatine starts goading Skywalker about his wife.

_Wife._

Dear Force, he’d thought the senator had more sense than that. “And how much of the threat against Senator Amidala is your doing, Sith?!” he snaps.

Skywalker’s surprise and shock nearly make him lose his other arm. Kit takes the blow on his behalf and ends up in a bad shape, himself.

Skywalker recovers, rallies himself…

And then they’re all left staring at the body of the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic as it blows up.


End file.
